Link Collection (weekly)

• Invisible Man – HonestlyWTF

  This is just cool. I had a hard time finding the artist in the first shot.

  “Liu Bolin camouflage’s himself into any surroundings with paint. It can take him up to 10 hours for a single shot. WOW!”

  tags: art LiuBolin

• What we talk about when we talk about NewSQL — Too much information

  451 Group on scalable, high performance relational databases. I spoke with ScaleBase at CloudConnect. Interesting approach.

  ““NewSQL” is our shorthand for the various new scalable/high performance SQL database vendors. We have previously referred to these products as ‘ScalableSQL’ to differentiate them from the incumbent relational database products. Since this implies horizontal scalability, which is not necessarily a feature of all the products, we adopted the term ‘NewSQL’ in the new report.

  And to clarify, like NoSQL, NewSQL is not to be taken too literally: the new thing about the NewSQL vendors is the vendor, not the SQL.”

  tags: sql dbms scalable 451group

• IBM Press room – 2011-04-07 IBM Joins Forces with Over 45 Organizations to Launch Cloud Standards Customer Council for Open Cloud Computing – United States

  “IBM has joined more than 45 leading cloud organizations to form the new Cloud Standards Customer Council, which is managed by OMG®. Organizations including Lockheed Martin, Citigroup and North Carolina State University have already joined the Council, which will help advance cloud adoption prioritizing key interoperability issues such as management, reference architectures, hybrid cloud, as well as security and compliance.

  The Council will complement vendor-led cloud standards efforts and establish a core set of client–driven requirements to ensure cloud users will have the same freedom of choice, flexibility, and openness they have with traditional IT environments.”

  tags: cloudcomputing omg ibm standards

• BBC News – Toyota and Microsoft announce technology partnership

  “The world’s biggest carmaker and the world’s biggest software company are investing $12m (£7.3m) in Toyota Media Services, a Toyota unit which handles digital information services.

  The aim is to provide features like GPS, power-management and multimedia services.

  Toyota’s 2012 hybrid vehicles will be the first to get the services.

  The carmaker hopes to be able to offer them to customers worldwide by 2015.

  The services will use Microsoft’s “cloud computing” – the remote storage and handling of data – system called Azure.”

  tags: toyota microsoft azure cloudcomputing

• IBM Unveils Cloud-Computing Initiative Aimed At Large Companies – WSJ.com

  “IBM on Thursday announced a new service–dubbed “Smartcloud”–that will enable clients to use a Web-based interface to install applications and configure databases on a platform provided by the company. The initiative is part of IBM’s push to expand into the cloud, one of the fastest growing areas in information technology.”

  ..”IBM is attempting to differentiate itself from some of the main players who have already made big bets on the cloud. Competitors such as Amazon.com Inc.’s (AMZN) Web Services, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Google Inc. (GOOG) employ cloud features that let customers pay for what they use, like a utility, as opposed to plunking down a fixed investment.

  IBM says its offering includes more features aimed toward large enterprise customers, such as heightened security, data privacy and the ability to certify the system for regulatory requirements. Moreover, IBM is offering a plethora of options, including public, private and hybrid clouds.”

  tags: cloudcomputing ibm

• Dell’s $1B Cloud Efforts Pit it Against Cisco and Amazon: Cloud Computing News «

  Big boy cloud week: Dell & IBM.

  “Dell is undertaking a sweeping effort to improve its place in the cloud computing market with several new data centers, services and a converged infrastructure system to compete with Cisco’s Unified Computing System.”

  tags: dell cloudcomputing

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.